


they came in by the dozens

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, Team as Family, War is hell, World War II, and they're just trying to get through it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 12:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9820757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: “Y’know,” Dugan gestures vaguely, “senators, war profiteers, generals. Big men don’t care if a few of us get blown up as long as we win the battle.”“Yeah,” Jones joins in, “we do the fightin’, they get the glory, and don’t care what else happens as long as they get their name on the front page.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> hey siri where tf is my howling commandos mini series???
> 
> anyways ww2-era bucky owns my ass and i always love me some pre-steve commando interaction

 

It’s an ambush. It was shitty intel, and there’s an ambush. 

There they are, marching along, making good time, looking for a good place to stop and make camp and fortify some shit, and then there are gunshots and yells from the front and wow, Germans, fuckin’ Nazis, showing up to shoot at them around every other corner like some kinda sickness they can never get rid of.

There’s a lot of shouting orders and frantic trying to get everything together because they’d been moving all day so they weren’t ready for a goddamn ambush okay, they were tired and a bunch of them were brand new greenies they’d picked up a few days back so those ones definitely weren’t ready—first battle was never pretty, but you could usually prepare for them; poor bastards never stood a chance in an ambush like this.

Dugan’s shoulder gets grazed, blood seeping through the arm of his jacket, but nothing more than that. The guy next to him gets shot three times, chest and shoulder and then head. Dugan doesn’t watch him fall because the bastard’s never getting up. 

Either way, the battle’s over as quickly as it began—bastards musta decided blowing up a bunch of American greenies wasn’t all that fun (or maybe they died, Dugan hopes vaguely)—and the gunshots stop, but the sound still echoes and the smoke from the fucking bombs and gunpowder hasn’t cleared up yet. Lotsa boys are coughing, Duagn’s coughing, a few of them aren’t because they’re dead or getting there.

(And there’s always that _relief_ after every skirmish that no one ever talks about because it sounds bad when you say it out loud, that relief even when one of your own has died, the relief that it wasn’t you—the relief that you’re still alive.)

Dugan spits the dirt out of his mouth and rubs at his eyes with the palm of his hand so he doesn’t get any goddamn dirt in them too. Blocks out the post-battle sounds around him, silence for one, two, three seconds, before opening back up. Ready to face it, because he’s always ready to face it. Always ready to keep moving. Walk it off. He should find someone in charge—he should find Sarge.

Lucky for him, Sarge finds him first. They’re both stumbling through the aftermath, smoke still lingering in the air. He’s bent over in a cough but he’s still moving, glancing around him as he goes.

“Shit,” Barnes says when he sees Dugan, clapping him hard on the shoulder, “you’re still alive.”

“You bet your ass,” he coughs back.

“Shit,” he says again, coughing, rifle tight in his hand, “Help me do a headcount or somethin’, yeah? Gotta see who’s still here,”

Dugan just nods absently—gotta see who’s still here, glad Sarge is still here, glad he’s still here, hopes most of the others are still here—and spits some more dirt out of his mouth before following Barnes.

(That’s what he does now: follows Barnes. He’d follow the kid into hell if he asked him to, if only because Barnes would lead them into it instead of ordering them—damn good Sergeant, that kid is.)

“Has anyone seen Rosalez?” he hears him ask, eyes skimming over huddled bodies and smoke.

“He blew the fuck up, Sarge,” someone says, young voice—greenie, probably, a little hysterical, “standin’ there one minute and the next minute—boom, sky fuckin high.”

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Barnes murmurs, runs a hand through his greasy hair.

“What about Richards?” Dugan cuts in, because he can’t see the jackass anywhere.

“He’s over here!” another someone yells, “Leg ain’t doing so good though!”

“Fuck,” Barnes exhales, young and exhausted, “Ramsey!” he glances around, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, “Ramsey, Richards is missing a leg,”

“Jesus, Sarge,” Ramsey says from somewhere, exhausted and young, “I’m a field medic not a goddamn surgeon—I’ll take a look.”

“Hey, Jones,” Dugan calls when he sees him rubbing smoke out of his eyes, “you taken a class right, college boy? Could you help him?”

Jones shrugs, damn young and so goddamn exhausted, “I can try,”

They go around like that for a while, coughing and yelling and searching. It takes a solid thirty minutes to find everyone who can still be found, and the smoke lingers the whole damn time, sticking to their lungs when they breathe it in. 

Fifteen dead by the end of their count. Five without any bodies to speak of, because the Nazis decided to throw bombs at them instead of shooting at them like respectable assholes. 

Dugan is exhausted by the end of it, but he isn’t surprised. Horrified, but not about to cry about it. He was one of the first to sign up, before the draft dragged oceans of men into the army with him, so he’s seen his far share of this shit. 

It doesn’t get any better, no matter times it happens, but you get…used to it, almost, as horrible as that sounds. Once you see your CO get his head the fuck blown off three feet away from you, seeing guys get shot doesn’t hit you as hard. (The sounds are still just as bad, though, keep you up at night.)

Barnes, though. He’s been around for a little over a year and a half, now, and been leading Dugan for most of that time. They’ve been through some shit, the two of them. Back at the beginning, Dugan had been sure Barnes wouldn’t make it through his first fire fight, damn pretty city boy that he was—never seemed to look out for his damn self, always too busy looking after the younger ones like he had some kinda obligation. He’d been sure he would freeze up or freak out or lose his grip. 

The kid had had his Moment—the one where everything slows, sound blurs out, and all you can see is the hell unfolding around you where you’re caught in the middle of it—and then closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and shook it the fuck off. He’d proved himself in that fire fight, pulled some tactical shit after most of the higher-ups were shot that got him promoted. Dugan had congratulated him, stuck a flask in his face, and he’d been following him ever since. 

Barnes has been around for a while now, but he still takes these things hard—harder than he ever shows, probably. The guy has younger siblings and a shellshocked dad and a best friend who attracts trouble like a magnet from all the stories he's heard—years of experience pretending to be strong, forced to be steady. Dugan’s never had siblings, but he’s seen enough to know when someone’s bluffing—even when they’re damn excellent at it—and maybe he’s always wanted some kind of little brother anyways, so maybe it’s just his job now to see through Sarge’s bullshit. 

Bastard takes it hard, but takes a deep breath and shakes his head a lot and goes to talk to the General like a good Sergeant does, hands forever tight around his rifle. 

He comes back a good twenty minutes later, walking like a man who’s just been told to fuck off and had to take it with nothing but a salute, deep frown on his face.

“How’d it go?” he asks needlessly. 

Barnes scowls deeper and scrunches his nose up in his best running imitation of General Asshole, voice high, “’Soldiers die in war, _Sergeant,_ it’s what they sign up for,’”

“Jackass,” Dugan grumbles, “It was shitty intel,”

“It was shitty goddamn intel and that bastard knew it,” Barnes agrees, “fuck,” 

Dugan waits a minute, because he’s not a complete asshole, before saying “We can’t find Johnson,”

_“Fuck,”_ Barnes breathes, running a hand through his hair again, anxious habit Dugan’s picked up on by now, “what’s that, sixteen? Fuck.”

“Fuck.” Dugan agrees. Lets Barnes take a moment, lets the kid lace his fingers behind his head and close his eyes a take a few deep breaths. Johnson was nineteen years old. Dugan knows Barnes saw him the as little brother he never had, so maybe he lets him take a few more moments than he usually would. 

“We digging?” Barnes finally asks, opening his eyes.

“Yeah,” Dugan answers, “got a few greenies digging up near the trees,”

“There any more shovels?”

Dugan shrugs, “Probably,”

“Let’s get to it then,” he says with another heavy clap on the shoulder, because that’s just the kinda guy Barnes is. He leads his men, but he also fights with them, hurts with them, bleeds with them, mourns with them. A damn good Sergeant, that one. 

 

Later that night, after they finish digging grave and start digging trenches, finish digging trenches and start breaking up into watches, Barnes is still hung up on it. 

Dugan is still a little hung up on it, if he’s being honest, which he’s not. Johnson was so damn _young,_ is the thing. Draft’s been dipping younger and younger the longer this war goes on. Vaguely, Dugan wonders how many young men the US will have left after the war is over, and if it’ll be enough. If any of this will ever be enough. If any of them can come back from this.

They’re sitting with their backs to the dirt behind them, a small fire crackling a few feet away. He and Barnes are sharing a cig, passing it back and forth because Barnes is down to his last pack and Dugan burned through his last one days ago and they don’t know when they’ll have a chance to stop and get any more—he doubts the Nazis would be kind enough to sell them some—so they gotta ration them out. (They’ve gone through four already, and Jones joined in around the second, but today was a shitty day so Dugan thinks they all deserve to treat themselves a little.)

“Soldiers ‘ _die in war’_?” Barnes is bitching about earlier, teeth clenched angrily around the cig, “Course soldiers die in war, but if the jackass did his job right and told us what the fuck was gonna happen, they wouldn’t _have_ to. Fucker didn’t give a damn about Rosalez or fuckin’ Johnson.”

Dugan shakes his angrily, plucks the cig from the kid’s mouth before he can bite through the damn thing, “Course he don’t care—big men never do.” 

Barnes raises a Pretty Boy eyebrow, “Who exactly are the ‘big men’?” 

“Y’know,” Dugan gestures vaguely, “senators, war profiteers, generals. Big men don’t care if a few of us get blown up as long as we win the battle.”

“Yeah,” Jones joins in, “we do the fightin’, they get the glory, and don’t care what else happens as long as they get their name on the front page,”

Barnes snorts, “Johnson was gonna have his name on the front page someday, goddamn Oxford boy,” 

“What was thing he was always goin’ on about?” Jones asks, “Some kinda bike?”

“Flying scooter,” Barnes says, because of course he remembers. 

“Yeah, shit,” Dugan grins, “He was so damn set on it, too.”

“Didn’t that rich Stark guy make some flying car, though?” Jones asks.

“Nah,” Barnes scoffs, “I seen that flying car and it ain’t shit. In the air for all a’ five seconds before the tires busted.” 

“Shit,” Jones smiles, “Johnny might’a beaten Stark with his damn flying _scooter_ ,” 

Barnes nods, “He’s fuckin’ dead now though, so, Stark don't have to watch his back just yet,” he says, bitter and grim—bottled up shit can’t stay bottled up for long, late nights where the things you say disappear when they sun comes up.

(“Straight through the head,” Barnes had said one night, night of his first kill, probably—kid was tough as nails, street smarts and bloody knuckles, but it was obvious he’d never killed before (Dugan hadn’t either, before this), “I am goddamn good at killing people.”

He’d taken a long drag of their shared shitty cigarette (“I thought you didn’t smoke,” “Old habits die hard”).

“Those are my two talents, I guess—takin’ care of Steve and shooting people, and only one of them matters out here,”

He’d looked so damn down about it that Dugan had to say something.

“Well, the other one matters everywhere else,” he’d shrugged, taking the cig from his outstretched hand, “Plus, you’re a pretty good storyteller too.”

“Thanks,” Barnes had snorted, “Years of practice.”)

Dugan frowns, shakes his head, can see Jones lean his head back against the dirt and close his eyes. 

The fire crackles, Barnes takes the cig back, and Johnson isn’t even buried a few meters away like rest of them because no one could find his body. 

“Nah, I guess he doesn’t,” Dugan says quietly. 

Barnes breaths out, smoke from the cig curling through the cool night air like the leftover trails of gunpowder that they’ll probably never get out of their lungs. 

“Rest in fuckin’ peace.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> pls,,,,,,reviews save my life, water my crops, write my essays


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